


Blame

by wheel_pen



Series: Daisy [33]
Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six-year-old Stefan has broken their mother’s music box, which means a caning is in someone’s future. “So, you be good, and I’ll be wicked. That way we won’t ever be mad at each other.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blame

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Daisy, my original character, moved to Mystic Falls about a year ago. There is something special about her. (Although actually she isn't in this story.)
> 
> 2\. This series begins with the first season of the TV show and completely diverges about halfway through the first season. Facts revealed later on the show might not make it into this series.
> 
> 3\. Underage warning: This series may contain human or human-like teenagers, in high school, in sexual situations.
> 
> 4\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate being able to play in this universe.

            “Stefan, what are you _doing_?” Damon asked in exasperation, walking into their mother’s bedroom. The younger boy whipped around with a guilty expression on his face, clutching the little china music box from his mother’s dressing table. “You’re too little to play with that,” Damon judged. “Put it back!”

            “I just want to hear it make music,” Stefan explained, trying to turn the delicate key with his chubby fingers.

            Damon stomped over authoritatively. “I said, put it back!”

            “No,” Stefan protested, turning away. As he did so, he lost his grip on the music box and it dropped to the wooden floor, the porcelain shattering. Both boys stared at it in horror, then at each other. Stefan’s eyes started to fill with tears.

            “What is goin’ on in here?” Novella demanded, hurrying into the bedroom at the sound of the crash. She gasped when she saw the broken music box lying between the two boys and her narrow gaze flickered between them. Slowly she put her hands on her hips in a gesture the brothers found very threatening.

            “I didn’t do it!” Damon insisted. “It was broken when we came in! I don’t know who did it!”

            “Well _that’s_ a likely story, Master Damon!” Novella chided. She grabbed his arm. “You just come along with me and we’ll see what Mr. Giuseppe has to say about it!”

            “I did it!” Stefan wailed, clutching the woman’s other arm. “I broke it!”

            “Oh, for goodness sake,” Novella fussed, kneeling down to wipe Stefan’s moist face with her apron. “Now stop this hollerin’, both of you.”

            “I didn’t do it!” Damon hollered. “It was broken when we walked in!”

            “No, _I_ broke it!” Stefan insisted.

            Novella shook her head, having no intention of resolving this herself. “Let’s go find your father.”

 

            Giuseppe Salvatore was writing in his journal when his wife entered the room, a distracted look on her face. He rose in greeting anyway and didn’t sit back down until she had settled into the other chair beside the fire. “The boys are tucked into bed,” she reported after a moment.

            “Good, good,” Giuseppe murmured, writing another few words on the page.

            “Damon told me he wasn’t even hungry,” she went on with a little smile. “Such cheek.”

            “He shouldn’t be disrespectful to you,” Giuseppe judged, glancing up at her.

            “No, no, he said it in a most respectful way,” Lucia corrected herself. “It was just amusing, how like a little man he sounded. So sure of himself.”

            “He’s eleven,” Giuseppe reminded her. “He _will_ be a man soon. And that means he’s too old to be so irresponsible and deceitful.”

            Lucia nodded dutifully; her husband was right, of course. She just didn’t like seeing the cane applied to either of her two precious children, the only two still with them of the many they’d tried to have. “Poor little Stefan was still crying and telling me it was _his_ fault,” she added, shaking her head as she picked up her knitting. “He’s such a sweet one.”

            “He shouldn’t lie,” Giuseppe reprimanded, “but he _is_ only six, and trying to protect his brother.” He was willing to make _some_ allowances for loyalty. “I’ll have a talk with him in the morning. He ought not to take Damon’s troubles on as his own.”

            “No, of course not,” Lucia agreed quietly. “I wonder, though, dear, how you’re so certain that Damon broke the music box, when Novella found them both there?” Her tone carefully suggested a casual curiosity about his reasoning, not a questioning of it.

            “Damon does have some tendencies towards dishonesty that must be checked,” Giuseppe mused. He faced his wife with an instructive expression. “You see, Damon claimed that the music box was broken when they came into the bedroom. If he’d confessed to doing it himself, I would’ve known it had really been broken by Stefan. You remember when my new saddle was scratched last year?” Lucia nodded; she remembered all too well. “Damon tried to take the blame then, but I knew he would never admit to such a thing if he’d really done it. So I realized it was really _Stefan_ who had scratched the saddle.”

            “You took the cane to _both_ of them that time, didn’t you, dear?” Lucia remarked neutrally.

            Giuseppe shrugged and settled back into his chair with his journal. “Damon’s the elder, he should’ve been looking after his brother better. Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

            “I’m glad they won’t be spoiled,” Lucia noted.

 

            In the darkness of their bedroom Stefan poked his brother in the back. “Does it hurt bad?” he whispered.

            “Only when you poke at me,” Damon hissed back.

            Stefan stopped poking. “Here, I brought you some cheese from dinner,” he announced proudly, reaching around to push the warm, sticky clump at his brother’s face. “I put it under my napkin! But Bosco ate part of it.”

            Frankly Damon didn’t care if the cheese had dog slobber on it; he was so hungry he just crammed it into his mouth. “Thanks,” he replied, once he’d swallowed.

            “Damon,” Stefan said, poking again. He stuck his finger in the back of his brother’s head this time, to avoid hurting him.

            “ _What?_ ” asked Damon in annoyance. He stomach still gnawed at him and his rear end stung where his father had caned it; he just wanted to go to sleep.

            “ _I_ broke the music box,” Stefan stated.

            “I know. I was there.”

            “Why didn’t you tell Father I did it?” Stefan wanted to know.

            Damon rolled over, painful as it was. “Remember the saddle last year?”

            He felt rather than saw Stefan nodding in the darkness. “I scratched it. And Father caned me!”

            “And you got sick after, and couldn’t get up for a whole fortnight,” Damon pointed out.

            “I don’t remember that,” Stefan claimed.

            “Well, you were asleep most of the time,” Damon explained knowledgeably. “But you’re too little and sickly to get caned. You might die from it!” he exaggerated, gleeful at hearing his brother’s horrified gasp. “And then Mama would be sad.”

            “I don’t want Mama to be sad,” Stefan avowed tremulously.

            “I don’t, either,” his older brother agreed. “So you just let me get caned for you. Until you’re older anyway, then we’ll switch for a while.”

            There was something in this idea that made sense to Stefan. “But I oughtn’t lie,” he tried to reason. “Lying is wicked.” Stefan always paid attention at church, even when it was boring.

            “Well, you say what you want, and _I’ll_ lie,” Damon advised him. “Father usually thinks I’m the one who causes trouble anyway.”

            This was getting too complex for Stefan. “But if you lie, then _you’ll_ be wicked. And I don’t want you to be wicked! You’ll go to Hell,” he worried, whispering the word. “And then I won’t see you ever again.”

            “But if we’re both good, we’ll always fight,” his brother claimed. “We’ll be bragging about who’s more good.”

            “Bragging is wicked,” Stefan remembered.

            “So, you be good, and I’ll be wicked,” Damon proposed with a smirk. “That way we won’t ever be mad at each other.”

            “I don’t want to be mad at you,” Stefan agreed. “I guess that’s fair, then.”

            “Good,” Damon nodded. “Can we go to sleep now?”

            “Okay. Goodnight, Damon.”

            “Goodnight, Stefan. Don’t let the snakes get you!”

            “Snakes?! What snakes?!”


End file.
